


Brass Ring

by fallen_woman



Category: Mad Men
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_woman/pseuds/fallen_woman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not a wheel, it's a carousel. Post-S3 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brass Ring

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://fallen-woman.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [mad men](http://fallen-woman.livejournal.com/tag/mad+men)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **Fic: Brass Ring [Mad Men], Pete/Peggy** _

Title: Brass Ring  
Fandom: Mad Men  
Pairings: Pete/Peggy  
Rating: PG  
Word Count: 735  
Summary: It's not a wheel, it's a carousel. Post-S3 finale.

He wanted a black horse, not a brown one.

"Does it matter?" Peggy said, bending around the racing children. She slid on the wood floor, and grabbed the edge of a saddle for support. They had sought refuge from the rain at the carousel, like everybody else in Central Park, it seemed.

"You're in Creative," Pete said. "Of course it matters." Pete looked at the carved horses; they were filling up fast. He spotted a vacant one, black, in a lime green harness. Its mane was the exact carroty red as Joan's, and he snickered a little as he mounted it. Peggy coughed in a way that could have been contemptuous before hoisting herself onto an ivory-and-gold horse to his left.

"Where do you think the others are?" she said, bouncing her ankles against the flanks of her horse. There was a little heart charm on her short brown boots, threaded through the top buckle. Surprisingly, everyone from the office had come out today, even Cooper.

"I think I saw Don buying Joan ice cream," he replied. "I always figured those two..."

"What?"

"Liked ice cream." He blinked at her. The saddle was a little slippery, and the tail of his pea coat flared awkwardly behind him. He always felt uncomfortable in long coats.

Peggy opened the handbag on her lap as the carousel cranked to life. "Don't talk about them like that." She took out a tortoise-shell comb and knifed it through her wet bangs. He could smell the Aqua Net on her, wafting to him through the childish shrieks and bobbing organ music. The scarf was tied too tight; his neck itched, from the wool.

Truthfully, he had always hated the carousel music, the overwrought décor (sparrows and swirls and carved monkeys climbing the panels), the squawks of the children, even when he had been a child himself. No one ever understood that this was supposed to be sacred. He closed his eyes, put his forehead against the spiraled pole, and imagined he was running across a plain, somewhere.

Peggy interrupted. "This was a good idea, having company time together. Even in the rain."

"Trudy suggested it," he said. It was strange, talking like this as their horses loped up and down in reverse harmony. Peggy was wearing button earrings, great big lilac ones, and he wanted to laugh.

"She's practically full-time here," Peggy said warmly, and Pete felt a stab of pride, and something sharper.

"She matches with everything." He slipped his hands off the pole and stuffed them in his pockets. He had forgotten his gloves in the morning. In front of them, a boy with a ratty haircut was crying. "It wouldn't matter if she were married to me, or anybody else."

"Why would you say something like that?" She was giving him that wide-eyed, angry glance, like he had broken something of hers.

He looked away from her and shrugged. "I don't mean it in a disrespectful sense. That's why I married her." _And why I love her a lot, nowadays_, he added.

They went silent, riding up and down on their separate steeds. Peggy kept stroking the hard swishes of the mane, and it occurred to him that she had probably never ridden a real horse.

"This is my first time on the carousel here," she said. "Growing up, I went to the one in Prospect Park."

"What was that like?" He gazed up at the gears, the red beams.

"It's not all horses; there's a lion, and a... deer, and a giraffe." She paused. "I liked the deer."

Something fleeted through Pete's mind, like a paper cut—a girl archer in the woods, dark-haired, her braid flying back with the wind. A cabin with a couch, and all the steak they could eat.

The carousel slowed, and the world dissolved. People thumped their boots, gathered their scarves, and parents tugged their kids toward the gate. Pete took a deep breath, imagining the smell of fir trees and black dirt. "Remember when you had a ponytail?"

She tilted her head. "Of course. I was the one who had it."

As the next wave of children clamored on, he scrambled off the Joan horse first and offered Peggy his hand, and for once it was okay that he couldn't kiss her, because her smile was trusting, and even though her thick mittens, he could feel her fingers.


End file.
